This is how it was

 

You told me your name

I told you mine

we touched hands

and everything else

is just rain

or the spaces between rain

how we measured

seasons by angles

how we talked

like pebbles in motion

how we smelled

of the sea and each other

and how in the night

that was quiet with blue

or the memory of blue

you promised me sky

nothing more, nothing less.

 

 

 

Thinking of my Mother as Lauren Bacall

 

Perhaps it was ‘The Look’

or how often you said

you loved Humphrey Bogart,

the pin-curled set, a hairstyle

that withstood winds on Dunoon Pier,

a daytrip with your friend Jenny,

fashioned in fur-trimmed camel coats

bringing Hollywood glamour

to an order of fish and chips.

Free to be post-war, out of uniform,

to be bold, lipsticked, to light

up a cigarette, laugh with young men

who thought they were Humphrey Bogart,

who dreamed of kissing you

in late night shop-front doorways,

sheltered from memories,

their bones grim, hollow

like mirroring ghosts

watching from windows,

while relentless stars

echo variations in time.

 

 

 

How a Stone Melts

 

Now when I dig in my pockets

there is only loose change

or worse a hole

where stars fall through

 

And if I think I can still

taste you, that last taste of summer

strung to my bones –

it hurriedly unfastens itself

 

My pain is ten years worn

ten years bled

I slip another stone into my heart –

stones were your talisman.

 

 

 

The way I learned to tell the time

 

After school, climbing on to your bed

holding the small mantelpiece clock

with its reassuring tick, cuddling up

to wasting muscles, thinning bones.

You pointed to twelve, three, six

and nine, I learned of halves and quarters

to and past. Everything measured, medication,

meals, a daughter’s repetition, and you –

horologist, amateur astronomer, tidal

locked, seeking the far side of the moon